Kirjoittaja
Aihe: Rocoto variety (Luettu 8029 kertaa)

I'm suspecting there's something so fundamentally different in the Finnish language that just tends to prevent people from learning to speak English fluently.

It's not just Finns and Finnish-English, but you might be more sensitive to the Finnish accent rather than equally sensitive to each from other areas. It's because you're used to letters corresponding to phonemes in the way they are used in your language, and they are not the same across all languages. Some general issues Finns have with English is voiced consonants (eg. d, b, g, v, z) and aspirated plosives before vowels (c(h)an, clan, p(h)eople, t(h)yp(h)ic(h)al), not to mention letters being pronounced in different ways depending on context (Google "ghoti"). Phonetics is a pretty interesting field and will go a long way to explain the difficulties, where they come from and how to get past them. I recommend taking a look, if you're at all into languages.

Compare Finnish-Swedish and Swedish-Swedish (rikssvenska), and you can quite easily tell the pronunciation in Finland is affected by Finnish - it's how a Finn speaks Swedish, even though the speaker might not know any Finnish. The best way I can explain the difference without going to the phoneme level is that you need to keep your mouth in a different position for each language. Manage to find that position, and the phonemes kind of align by themselves.

While we went quite far off topic here, I join the others in welcoming any chat in English here (or on the unofficial Chili Association IRC channel!), but also encourage you to learn Finnish - it will help you understand much more about the Finns than just their language. I happen to know several people who learned Finnish at a later age, so I can definitely say it's possible - and that you're already at a very good level, since you can form such a sentence as your opening in the other thread!

Oh wow so many responses! Lol well I am still learning Finnish and it's going good. In my opinion I think Finns speak amazing English so much so I have even asked before if they are from America or lived there because I could hear no accent, even tho they have lived in Finland their whole life. Now to speak that fluently without ever leaving Finland is pretty amazing to me. I can pronounce Finnish pretty well I've been told just that everything is very "soft".

Chipe don't worry about your pronunciation I'm sure it's not as bad as you imagine. I can roll my "r"s but a few words I really can't with out a look of strain on my face eg. "Stressi" it's soooooo difficult to get that st then trilled r sound that I literally stop trying and pronounce that word in English when I speak lol

Ajii I do plan to buy that book for myself just worried about the possibility of some unique scientific words making it so difficult to read. Either way I'm learning finnish and someday I'll be able to read it with ease so it is on my list of future purchases

Wolfman I have just kept on speaking in Finnish when they switch to English it does work but I always get that weird look at first or they keep speaking English as I speak Finnish that happened one time. haha.

Anyways the main reason I joined this forum is because one the Fatalii website has the best selection and descriptions of unique chili pepper seeds I've ever seen; and two because I live in Finland I know possibly weather/light factors are unique. I would like people who understand how to grow here despite the imperfect conditions and possible products that might be difficult for me to find on my own here.

Wolfman I have just kept on speaking in Finnish when they switch to English it does work but I always get that weird look at first or they keep speaking English as I speak Finnish that happened one time. haha.

Don't care those weird looks When you speak finnish and others speak english both get practice, it may sound "silly" but don't worry. I've done that years ago (decades ago) with co-worker and it helped both to learn...

It's not just Finns and Finnish-English, but you might be more sensitive to the Finnish accent rather than equally sensitive to each from other areas.

That is likely true to some extent and I have certainly considered that. But I think one of the biggest differences as compared to for example those from France, Germany or India, all with their rather distinctive accents, is that somehow all those have a sort of flow when they speak, whereas the "rally English" has more stops and sounds harsher. As Jennakuu just said, she has been told that her Finnish sounds very "soft". I think that is the same phenomenon reversed.

but also encourage you to learn Finnish - it will help you understand much more about the Finns than just their language.

And even if you speak English to them, you are likely to spot some differences to how natives here react to certain sentences as comparison to Americans for instance. It has been said for example that "How are you?" is sort of a longer version of "Hello" to Americans, they just expect you to respond similarly. But some of them have been surprised here to get a response of what illnesses one has had lately and so on .

Speaking of meaningless sentences, I just watched George Carlin's take on some of the common expressions in English language:

Oh wow so many responses! Lol well I am still learning Finnish and it's going good. In my opinion I think Finns speak amazing English so much so I have even asked before if they are from America or lived there because I could hear no accent, even tho they have lived in Finland their whole life. Now to speak that fluently without ever leaving Finland is pretty amazing to me. I can pronounce Finnish pretty well I've been told just that everything is very "soft".

English is an important language in Finland, more important and visible than many people think. There are a lot of reasons why people speak and write good English, here's a few of them.- We start learning English at the second grade- We use subtitles, not dubbing, for foreign movies and TV programs, which makes us hear a lot of English after we start reading Finnish- Universities are quite international and part of university teaching is nowadays in English in many universities- In many companies, especially in the IT sector, English is the working language and in a lot more companies English is needed with co-workers or customers

English is an important language in Finland, more important and visible than many people think. There are a lot of reasons why people speak and write good English, here's a few of them.- We start learning English at the second grade- We use subtitles, not dubbing, for foreign movies and TV programs, which makes us hear a lot of English after we start reading Finnish- Universities are quite international and part of university teaching is nowadays in English in many universities- In many companies, especially in the IT sector, English is the working language and in a lot more companies English is needed with co-workers or customers

One more quite general reason: Finnish is spoken only here, and the total of native speakers is something like 5 million. On a global scale, that's a relatively small group having small internal markets, living in a rather insignificant corner of the world, having little significance to the rest of the world. There's quite a clear need to be able to communicate and do business outside that small box. The language of choice for that is pretty obvious.

As for the IT sector, which happens to be where I do my work, English is an absolute must. There's no way you could work in that field efficiently without it. Pretty much everything in writing is in English, and when it's not, it's bound to cause problems. Write documents in Finnish, and you will lose your options for 99.9% of global workforce, customers etc. And in a technical field like that, there's no really an option to use Finnish, it will be necessarily a mix of English and Finnish anyway, Finglish as we say. There's plenty of stuff that doesn't even have equivalent Finnish terms, or at least none that professionals would use, or even recognize. And there's no point in trying to invent those, as some do, don't know why.

I for example just wrote some documentation in English that in the near term will most likely be read only by those who speak Finnish. The choice of language is part of future proofing as explicitly requested by Finnish customers. And if the request would have been to write it in Finnish, I would have more or less demanded to be allowed to write it in English, even if it had been known that no foreigner will ever read it. It is just so much easier for technical stuff that refers to English terms anyways. In fact, I even tend to write most of my own private notes in English. I'm also having much more difficulties to understand such documents that somebody else has written in Finnish, especially if they contain lots of words that would have been very familiar in English, but somebody has tried to invent translations for them.